Steps to Make Your Students Feel Welcome This Fall is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. Three teachers explain how they are going to start the COVID-19-affected new school year, including by sending videos or letters to students before classes begin. Here are some excerpts:
It’s not the first time we’ve all heard it, but a ton of recent studies reinforce the fact that if you want to reopen physical schools, then reduce the rate of community infection. The fact that outside-of-school factors have the biggest influence on what happens at school is no surprise, as I’ve previously written at Reopening Schools Is Analogous To The Research Finding That The Greatest Influe
WikiImages / Pixabay August 6th and 9th are the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You might be interested in The Best Resources For Learning About The Atomic Bombings Of Japan .
Antonio_Cansino / Pixabay I wrote about this last week (see FEDERAL EVICTION EXPIRES TODAY; CALIFORNIA’S EXPIRES IN SEPTEMBER – HOW WILL SCHOOLS COPE WITH BIG INCREASE OF HOMELESS STUDENTS? ). This new infographic puts the crisis in visual terms: You will find more infographics at Statista
geralt / Pixabay Here are new additions to THE BEST POSTS PREDICTING WHAT SCHOOLS WILL LOOK LIKE IN THE FALL : The Risk That Students Could Arrive at School With the Coronavirus is from The New York Times. These kids are getting left behind when schools go online is from CNN.
Sal Khan did a pretty good interview with Nikole Hannah-Jones yesterday on The 1619 Project. I’m adding it to: THE BEST – & MOST INTERESTING – RESOURCES FOR STUDYING HISTORY USEFUL RESOURCES FOR LEARNING ABOUT THE 400TH ANNIVERSARY OF BRINGING ENSLAVED AFRICANS TO AMERICA "Teach students to question. Every time you're exposed to a narrative you've never heard before, you don't have to believe tha
suhailsuri / Pixabay Muslims around the world are celebrating Eid al-Adha, or “Festival of Sacrifice,” today. You might be interested in The Best Online Resources For Learning About Eid al-Adha .
is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. Three educators highlight the role of memory in learning, such as the importance of guarding against remembering “without understanding” and being strategic about when to emphasize memorization’s importance with students. Here are some excerpts:
The United Nations has declared that August 9th is The International Day Of The World’s Indigenous People. You can find a ton of related resources at The Best Sites For International Day Of The World’s Indigenous People . And Google has just unveiled a great addition to that list! NIRIN: Art From the Edge is a virtual exhibit of “contemporary art from around the globe in a First Nations-led exhib
Here are new additions to THE BEST POSTS PREDICTING WHAT SCHOOLS WILL LOOK LIKE IN THE FALL : Open schools are the exception, not the rule, around the world is from Politico. ‘It’s too late’: Stimulus can’t save schools from a chaotic start is also from Politico. What If We Radically Reimagined the New School Year? is by Ashley McCall. Well – done interactive though, of course, in these illustrat
geralt / Pixabay Here are several new videos that teachers could find useful: I’m adding this new CBS News video to I’m adding this next one to The Best Resources For Learning About Rube Goldberg Machines : This one is going on the THE BEST RESOURCES FOR TEACHING ABOUT THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION list: This new TED-Ed video could be useful for a class discussion on ethics:
President Obama gave a pretty amazing eulogy today at John Lewis’ funeral. You can read the transcript here . I’ve also embedded some quotes from it after the video. I think they could be particularly useful in a classroom lesson. "John Lewis will be a founding father of what will be a fuller, fairer America" President Obama — Larry Ferlazzo (@Larryferlazzo) July 30, 2020 "But the testing of his
Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation is the headline of a column John Lewis wrote for The New York Times and had asked that it published on the day of his funeral. I’m adding it to: Terrible News: John Lewis Has Passed – Learn About His Life THE BEST – & MOST INTERESTING – RESOURCES FOR STUDYING HISTORY
Aynur_zakirov / Pixabay NASA is sending (and already sent) two rovers to Mars this month (and China is sending one, too). You can read about them at The New York Times interactive, Meet the 3 Spacecraft Heading to Mars This Summer . You might be interested in The Best Sites For Learning About The Mars Rover Curiosity . You can check out this useful video, which is produced by, of all people, The
Here are new additions to THE BEST POSTS PREDICTING WHAT SCHOOLS WILL LOOK LIKE IN THE FALL : Opening Schools Won’t Be Easy, but Here’s How to Do It Safely is from The NY Times. Teachers Wary of Returning to Class, and Online Instruction Too is from The New York Times. It includes a couple of paragraphs about our Sacramento district, though I think it mischaracterizes our union’s position last sp
No Student Should Have to Sit Through a Zoom Lecture appeared in Slate a few days ago, and has been extremely popular in social media. It makes the very important point that active learning is the way to go – in the physical classroom and online (see The Best Research Demonstrating That Lectures Are Not The Best Instructional Strategy ). Unfortunately, though, it provides hardly any mention of ho
The New York Times shared the above terrifying statistic today . We already know the impact that out-of-school factors have on student achievement (see The Best Places To Learn What Impact A Teacher (& Outside Factors) Have On Student Achievement ). Pile on this additional economic stress, and the fact that this means many of our high school students will be taking either over-or-under the table
Q&A Collections: Assessment is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. All Classroom Q&A posts on Assessment (from the past nine years!) are described and linked to in this compilation post. Here’s an excerpt from one of them:
geralt / Pixabay Things are likely to get a bit rough for us teachers, our students, and their families during the upcoming school year. Right now, there are over sixty posts at my Education Week column, including commentaries, videos and infographics from over one-hundred educators sharing their experiences with distance learning. Check them out at School Closures & the Coronavirus Crisis . And,
ractapopulous / Pixabay Here are new additions to THE BEST POSTS PREDICTING WHAT SCHOOLS WILL LOOK LIKE IN THE FALL: Teachers Union OKs Strikes If Schools Reopen Without Safety Measures In Place is from NPR. Did America Set Public Schools Up to Fail? is from New York Magazine. COVID-19 school guidance from Trump and the CDC paints teachers as villains is from NBC News. Influential national teache
Prawny / Pixabay Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Laura Gibbs who, I believe, creates the best teacher resources out there if you want to teach about folktales. I use her “tiny tales” when my Beginning and Intermediate English Language Learners write their own. Laura was kind enough to agree to write about them. I’m adding this post to A Beginning List Of The Best Folklore & Myth Sites .
I’m making a change in the content of the regular feature. In addition to sharing the top five posts that have received the most “hits” in the preceding seven days (though they may have originally been published on an earlier date), I will also include the top five posts that have actually appeared in the past week. Often, these are different posts. You might also be interested in IT’S THE THIRTE
geralt / Pixabay Here are new additions to THE BEST POSTS PREDICTING WHAT SCHOOLS WILL LOOK LIKE IN THE FALL : A Small Georgia City Plans to Put Students in Classrooms This Week is from The New York Times. Here’s How Back To School Might Look In The New Normal is from NPR. What Will Schools Do When a Teacher Gets Covid-19? is from The NY Times. Closed cafeterias, ‘recess’ at your desk: School wil
Senator Tom Cotton did teachers everywhere a great service yesterday by making a ridiculous attack on The New York Times “1619 Project” and the fact that some school districts are using it to teach about slavery. You can read about his comments at Sen. Tom Cotton wants to take ‘The 1619 Project’ out of classrooms. His efforts have kept it in the spotlight. Now, we just have to introduce the Proje
JamesDeMers / Pixabay The Korean War began 70 years ago on June 25, 1950. You might be interested in The Best Sites For Learning About The Korean War .
Movement Helps Make ‘Learning Joyful & Magical’ is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. Using drama and gallery walks are among the ways to incorporate movement in teaching, say four educators who share their strategies. Here are some excerpts:
I’m fairly active on Pinterest and, in fact, have curated 22,000 resources there that I haven’t shared on this blog. I thought readers might find it useful if I began sharing a handful of my most recent “pins” each week (I’m not sure if you can see them through an RSS Reader – you might have to click through to the original post). You might also be interested in MY MOST POPULAR PINS OF 2020 – PAR
Schools that don’t physically reopen would lose out on most funding under Republican stimulus bill is the headline of today’s Chalkbeat article that summarizes the Republican’s opening gambit for a stimulus bill. As someone said on Twitter today, and I’m sorry I don’t remember who it was, if this passes, schools will make some very bad decisions for their students and teachers, and long distance
Editor’s Note: I’m adding this guest post to The Best Music Websites For Learning English . Jennifer Mitchell teaches high school ELs in Dublin, Ohio. Connect with her on Twitter: @readwritetech or on her blog. Music has always held a special role in my life. I’m known for humming without even knowing it, and between songs in my Spanish classes (first as a student, then as a teacher) and my passi
Classroom Activities to Start Your Online or Hybrid New Year Strong Katie Hull Synieski and I share a book excerpt offering ideas on building relationships as our online or hybrid school year begins, including question starters and “show-and-tell” activities. Here’s an excerpt:
Nine years ago, in another somewhat futile attempt to reduce the backlog of resources I want to share, I began this occasional “” post where I share three or four links I think are particularly useful and related to…ed tech, including some Web 2.0 apps. You might also be interested in THE BEST ED TECH RESOURCES OF 2020 – PART ONE , as well as checking out all my edtech resources . Here are this w
geralt / Pixabay I’ve just mailed out the August issue of my very simple free monthly email newsletter . It has over 3,000 subscribers, and you can subscribe here . Of course, you can also join the eighteen thousand others who subscribe to this blog daily. Here Are 8 Ways You Can Subscribe For Free…
Q&A Collections: Education Policy Issues is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. All Classroom Q&A posts on Education Policy Issues (from the past nine years!) are described and linked to in this compilation post. Here’s an excerpt from one of them:
kalhh / Pixabay I realized today that, though I have been publishing lists of the most popular posts from this blog weekly and yearly (at least for the past several years), I hadn’t brought those annual lists together. I thought readers might, or might not, find them interesting, so here they are: THE TEN MOST POPULAR POSTS IN 2020 – SO FAR THE MOST POPULAR POSTS FROM THIS BLOG IN 2019 – PART TWO
Here’s my regular round-up of new “The Best…” lists I posted this month (you can see all 2,186 of them categorized here ): HERE ARE DETAILED – & TENTATIVE – DISTANCE LEARNING PLANS FOR ALL MY FALL CLASSES A LOOK BACK: 2020’S BEST POSTS FROM THIS BLOG – PART ONE TERRIBLE NEWS: JOHN LEWIS HAS PASSED – LEARN ABOUT HIS LIFE THE TEN MOST POPULAR POSTS IN 2020 – SO FAR THE BEST RESOURCES ON INSTRUCTION
Each week, I publish a post or two containing three or four particularly useful resources on classroom instruction, and you can see them all here. Of course, this is a crazy time for “classroom” instruction…. You might also be interested in THE BEST RESOURCES ON INSTRUCTION IN 2020 – PART ONE. Here are this week’s picks: 3 Brain-Based Strategies That Encourage Deeper Thinking is from Edutopia. Si
As regular readers know, at the end of each week I share the five most popular posts from the previous seven days. I thought people might find it interesting to see a list of the ten most popular posts from the previous thirty days. You might also be interested in It’s The Thirteenth Anniversary Of This Blog – Here Are The Forty All-Time Most Popular Posts. Not to mention A LOOK BACK: 2020’S BEST
Clker-Free-Vector-Images / Pixabay Here are new additions to THE BEST VIDEO TUTORIALS ON TEACHING REMOTELY – PLEASE SUGGEST MORE! : K-12 Online Teaching Academy is from San Jose State University. To tell you the truth, I can’t figure out who actually brought this How-To Distance Teach Tutorials collection together, but it looks good.
Here are today’s additions to THE BEST POSTS PREDICTING WHAT SCHOOLS WILL LOOK LIKE IN THE FALL , and they are all from The New York Times: ‘Online School Is Not the End of the World’ ‘Home-Schooling Won’t Kill Us. Covid-19 Might.’ A Visit To The Classrooms The Kids Left Behind.
jdblack / Pixabay Marian Dingle shared this video on Twitter. It’s by ninth-grader Liv McNeil. You can read about her and the film at “For a minute-long sequence, I cut together 480 clips”: This 15-year-old director’s short film about quarantine is going viral .
mohamed_hassan / Pixabay The VirtuEL Conference took place today – it provides lots of great professional development sessions by ELL educators for ELL educators. This one was its fourth annual one. And, they invited me to give the keynote, which you can watch below. You can access all of today’s great sessions, and there are a lot of them (in addition to sessions from previous years, here . I’ll
BiljaST / Pixabay Six years ago I began this regular feature where I share a few posts and resources from around the Web related to ESL/EFL or to language in general that have caught my attention. You might also be interested in THE BEST RESOURCES, ARTICLES & BLOG POSTS FOR TEACHERS OF ELLS IN 2019 – PART ONE and THE BEST RESOURCES, ARTICLES & BLOG POSTS FOR TEACHERS OF ELLS IN 2019 – PART TWO. A
Our publisher has just released the Distance Learning chapter from our upcoming book, The ESL/ELL Teacher’s Survival Guide, 2nd edition . Please remember that is is a draft , so it hasn’t gone through the usual proofreading regimen. The book itself will come out in late 2021, so there will be plenty of time for Katie and I to make changes based on our experiences this fall. You can download it he
Eight Ways to Use Movement in Teaching & Learning is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. Four educators share ideas on how to use movement with students, including for learning vocabulary through the use of Total Physical Response. Here are some excerpts:
OpenClipart-Vectors / Pixabay Well, that should go smoothly this year https://t.co/36jKcp1RBV — Larry Ferlazzo (@Larryferlazzo) July 24, 2020 Check out today’s article in Chalkbeat, Standardized tests were canceled last school year. Don’t count on that happening again, federal official says . Sure, that’s going to work out well with remote and hybrid learning. And let’s add even more pressure to
I regularly highlight my picks for the most useful posts for each month — not including “The Best…” lists. I also use some of them in a more extensive monthly newsletter I send-out. You can see older Best Posts of the Month at Websites Of The Month (more recent lists can be found here ). You can also see my all-time favorites here . I’ve also been doing “A Look Back” series reviewing old favorite
Here are new additions to THE BEST POSTS PREDICTING WHAT SCHOOLS WILL LOOK LIKE IN THE FALL : When Is It Safe for Schools to Reopen? is from The NY Times. Held back: As parents realize how badly the U.S. botched the next school year, we’re furious is from The Washington Post.
geralt / Pixabay I’ve been sharing tentative distance learning plans for all my classes (see HERE ARE DETAILED – & TENTATIVE – DISTANCE LEARNING PLANS FOR ALL MY FALL CLASSES ) and my last post
